youtube vs. facebook video

[brochris]

I'm trying to figure out the "best" way to upload content. I'm talking specifically right now about videos that I make to introduce sermons, but it can apply to other forms of content as well (blog posts as facebook notes vs. on the church website, pictures as facebook photos vs. flickr photos, etc).

Facebook seems like the place to be when it comes to interaction with church members. So the logical choice (if my goal was primarily to engage them with the content) would be to upload everything to facebook. But utilizing youtube, flickr, and the church website allows for a wider distribution of the content, so I've been uploading content to those places and then linking to them from facebook.

The downside to doing it this way is that within facebook the content gets lost. For example, if a church member on facebook (or a visitor to the church's facebook page) wants to see all the videos we've produced lately, you won't be able to find them on facebook unless you scroll down the wall and find when we linked to the youtube videos. If I would have uploaded them to facebook, you could simply click the "Videos" tab at the top.

I've thought about uploading each video to both places, but then I have no way of tracking each video's influence. Facebook doesn't show stats. I've also thought about uploading a "teaser" video to facebook with a link in the description to the full video on youtube. That way, facebook users can easily find videos that we've made, and follow the link to the video.

What does your church do? Am I just being way too analytical about all this? Should I just upload to both places and get over it?

[KeckCreative]

I'd stick with uploading to video hosting site and then linking to Facebook. Perhaps a link can be added to the church's Facebook page profile that links to the church's YouTube or Vimeo channel.

[crob]

Our church uses Vimeo....which tracks when the video is watched wherever it is. So when we link to our facebook, it tracks the same. I've found a lot of people watch it there. Also with Vimeo you can customize what videos pop up at the end. Hope that helps some.

[zactommo]

Facebook is known to be very hard on users uploading video with copyrighted content in it, such as music etc, regardless of weather you have the appropriate license or not. Do it 3 times and you can say bye bye to your facebook account.

Youtube and the other sites are a bit more liberal with these things. I'm personally a fan of vimeo also. I find it a lot nicer to use than youtube, but either vimeo or youtube will work well for linking videos to your facebook account, and you won't need to worry about the facebook copyright police being on your back either.

[jksbc]

Right. Youtube will tag songs on videos then advertise the songs when the video is shown. They will email you the information letting you know the song is copyrighted and they've taken care of tagging it and there's nothing else you need to do. That's not the case with all material though. My son made a little silly video with an old fifties song and I guess that particular recording label wasn't covered. They stripped the audio from the video.

[st1x10]

I vote for Vimeo. There pro account is only $60 a year for 5GB upload a week. You can't beat it. We then post it to facebook, twitter and our webpage. It shows up with a thumbnail on Facebook. Working great for us and inexpensive.

[BlueEyed]

We also use Vimeo at our church and it's very good. The pro account is very nice and it gives you lots of options. Another vote for Vimeo from me!

[jsharris83]

I think i am about to start using vimeo at our church. we currently have a media center that we have to pay 20 bucks a month for and we currently have 3 gigs of space for it and the rest of our site. sounds like vimeo is the way to go and will be cheaper in the long run with better quality videos as well. I have to really compress them on my site now so i dont take up to much room.

[genepensiero]

+1 for vimeo. stats. flexibility. clean interface. and you don't have to deal with all the unwanted content cluttering up your video page that youtube & facebook are going to bring to the table.

[SterlingAug]

We also use Vimeo Pro at my church.

The raw video each week turns out around 19GB .mov file which I compress (Compressor 4) down to about 640MB before uploading. I then have Vimeo create mobile versions of the video before embedding it on our website.

http://FindPurposeAtFaith.org

Click on the Weekly Sermon Videos link on the right side menu.